Friday Ephemera (822)
The diamond knuckle dusters you’ve always wanted. || Always carry a spare. || Behind those high-tech specs. || Sales pattern detected. || Street panto. || Not a good place to lose forward momentum. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || Decorum at customs. || A brief guide to vocal fry. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || Barbecue scenes. || The thrill of early bathyspheres. || Learning is happening. || World’s loudest man. He’s Australian. || In stationery news. || Question asked. || A newcomer and a window licker. || Wall crawling. || Peeing down her leg in her friend’s shower makes her feel like a man. || “How is a moment in time stored in squishy meat?” || Thirty tonnes of antimatter dust per day. || Meet the man who collects food wrappers, 1981. || Influencer, you say. || And remember, photography is hard.
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I don’t see anything standing still.
Get sorted? Haldol will do that.
Cultural enrichment, NSFW level
That’s normal Afghan, Massoud, normal Afghan.
You bastards!
The result.
Guess that tune.
You know how they say that men have well-developed eye-hand coordination so they can chuck spears into mastodons?
Nope. It’s for this classic compilation.
Wall crawling
‘Hello, Directory Enquiries? an exorcist, plrease, local as possible’
She didn’t want to take that photo anyway.
Morning, all.
Close enough.
Feat of beer relocation.
[ Hastily corrects mortifying typo. ]
Ms Paige Cognetti wants a world in which police “don’t have firearms.” She invokes Japan as a model, despite the fact that Japanese police officers are in fact armed, and while somehow failing to notice some of Japan’s more obvious demographic features.
Oh, and she’s running for Congress. Obviously.
Canberra mentioned – So is the Aus taxpayer paying for this ?
It is now.
You used to just point the dedicated thing (camera) at what you wanted to photograph, take two shots (one just in case) then send them off, wait a couple of weeks, experience relived joy when they returned, and then joy again when you looked at them 25 years later because you had stuck them in a photo album or put them in a shoebox and not lost them.
This is a fascinating video insofar as it shows the physics of vocal fry and the other places where it shows up in various dialects.
But when he says “oh, you just don’t like it in young women because you’re a bigot,” that’s where I must strongly object.
Vocal fry drives people my age (Gen X) into a rage because it’s an element of the old “Valley Girl” dialect, mocked by Frank Zappa and his daughter in the 80s. Maybe it took awhile for knowledge of this dialect to get across the pond, I don’t know, but for my generation, the dialect indicates that the speaker is a vapid, spoiled, turbo-ninny without a thought in her head.
I don’t know how — maybe through Disney TV live-action shows — but suddenly a whole generation of women were talking like complete imbeciles, and yet they were unaware of how awful they sounded.
In the 2010s I remember sitting, dumbfounded, in a meeting, listening to a perfectly competent woman explaining something as if she were talking to her dumb teen friends about THE CUTEST BOY!!!
I don’t think there’s any way for me to ever accept that accent as anything but moronic-sounding. In fact, we had a “tech meeting” (Zoom seminar) a couple weeks ago, a new thing organized by a new chick, whose uptalk and vocal fry and general inflection pattern made it sound like she was the emcee of a baby kitten pageant, not the organizer of something technical.
They requested anonymous feedback and I gave it — gently, of course, because I know she honestly has no idea — and said that a change in diction might be in order. Next meeting? She really had toned it down. Whoa! Someone listened!
Why is it *always* about overstepping boundaries?
Can’t give you a thumbs up – but this is spot on (and the rest of your comment too)
It needn’t be. I just double-click the power button and the camera app opens instantly, set to whatever configuration I’ve chosen.
Likewise, young women lecturing us sternly on pronouns or “whiteness” or whatever, while sounding like some archetypal ditzy pinhead opinionating on lip gloss. It’s almost funny.
It is curious just how often these acts of supposed self-affirmation entail transgression of some kind, an imposition on others, or an air of something grubbily fetishistic.
He needs to get back on the boat.
Speaking of newcomers and the enrichment they bring.
There are creatures walking among us, in unprecedented numbers, for whom the words human being would be a merely technical term and inaptly flattering.
As if the highest objective were to prevent jails from running out of space. Not, say, incapacitating sociopaths and predators, and sparing the law-abiding from their activities. As if no more prisons could ever be built.
I used to find TED talks interesting. Initially I really got something out of them. Now, 15 seconds in and I’m like, oh shut up.
Because that is how territory is conquered. One little piece at a time.
Sorted.
Meanwhile I sometimes feel silly for all the screws and especially oddball fasteners that I keep sorted in my workshop. I’m sure there a reason but “Bring me the Catalina Macaw. No not that one, the one with the 7.4 cm beak. No, not that one. I meant the one with the 7.4 cm beak and the bumblefoot…No, not that one…”
That wasn’t photography. That was picture taking.
[glares at David from her mountain compound]
Meanwhile, Elon posted the entirety of the movie “Citizen Vigilante” on his X account to watch for free.
Because these are perverts: It’s just no fun unless you’re literally or figuratively molesting people.
I need to know if she ever took that photo.
After accidentally opening 56 other apps, accidentally checking her notifications, and then accidentally taking a selfie, I should think the moment had passed.
Someone who cares about her, or someone who can’t bear the sight of her faffing about, really should explain how to set up a camera-launch shortcut.
Also, how do women with long nails operate touchscreens?
Previously in the world of photography.
[ Hears Stephanie gnawing on edge of wooden desk. ]
Wouldn’t it be more succinct to ask what the Aus taxpayer isn’t paying for?
Two weeks? In the olden days in ‘Murca it took a whole day.
Also in ‘Murca, one is good, six are better.
But they are archetypal ditzy pinheads opinionating.
Physiological Phact Of The Day: People who can’t breathe cannot say over and over that they cannot breathe.
However, she is in Florida so she just has to find the right judge and claim she had COVID.
You’ve more patience than I. Still, that had some elements of interest.
Vile in every way.
Oh yes, absolutely. A landfill candidate. And the amount of Fat Slag Ass filling the screen, for what feels like forever, is just the icing on the cake.
See, I’m bringing to you the full spectrum of the human experience.
I missed that detail.
You’re probably right, I just don’t have any patience anymore. As I said I used to greatly appreciate listening to these sort of things, people talking about subjects that they were experts in or even auditing entire courses on history on YouTube or watching lectures about nature or biology, neither of which I would consider favorite subjects. The TED talk thing was initially very interesting and I distinctly remember Mike Rowe’s one. But after that, AlGore did one and it was apparent how politicized it had become. Then corporate management picked up on them as well and it really went to shit. They ceased to feel like people sharing what they knew for the audience’s benefit and felt more like the audience was there for the speaker’s ego. Maybe that’s totally on me but I don’t think so.
Begone, demon.
As they say, nothing good happens after midnight and in Ft. Lauderdale, nothing good happens after midnight west of I-95.
Also…I lost interest in this World Cuppy thing after the BS of 2020, but now I see the US is gonna have to play both Bosnia AND Hertzavisinia? Not saying we shouldn’t destroy both of them but still. Who handicaps this stuff? Though I have vague memories of us bombing the crap out of something over there some time ago. It’s all getting fuzzy these days…